


The Red Bow Academy

by Kimra



Category: Original Work
Genre: Controlling Organisation, Family, Gen, Hiding, Magical Realism, Red String of Fate, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-02
Updated: 2019-11-02
Packaged: 2021-01-07 22:49:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21225521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kimra/pseuds/Kimra
Summary: The Red Bow Academy controls the matchmakers, and the matchmakers control the world. Selsa does not want either of those things.





	The Red Bow Academy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ashling](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashling/gifts).

“You should ask him out.” Selsa whispers as she hands over the fresh cup of coffee to the customer. The customer has spikey pink hair, a heart shaped face, and keeps looking at a weedy guy sitting in the opposite corner of the café. The customer flusters and nearly drops the cup, but Selsa expects that, should expect it by now. “You’d be cute together.” She tells the girl.

“I can’t,” the girl smiles painfully, “mum’s been saving up so I can see a matchmaker next July.”

Selsa smiles encouragingly at the girl, “Well, I think you’d be a perfect couple.” But the girl goes back to her corner with her book and doesn’t go and introduce herself to him.

Selsa takes a break so she can blink the red out of her vision and calm down. Next Monday she’ll try and encourage him. They’ve got a year and Dwight and Tiffany (if their coffee cup names are to be believed) have a thick red ribbon that snaps tight when they’re nearby and pulses with the kind of strength Selsa’s waiting to find for herself.

“Do you experience visual auras? See things moving in the corner of your eye? The Red Bow Academy might be looking for you.” The TV man says with a rising lilt to his voice that would be exciting. Selsa’s sister Bibi mutes the TV and turns to Selsa.

“Have you ever considered-” Bibi has asked it many times before, Selsa has answered it the same every time.

“No.” She says firmly. Bibi crosses her arms, “It’s just, maybe they can train you?”

Selsa crunches down on a corn chip bitterly.

“Look, I know you don’t want to go-“

“If it was all that great they wouldn’t have to force you to attend.” Selsa snaps at her sister, sick of the attempt at persuasion.

“Oh come on!” Bibi throws a corn chip at her, “Have you seen the lives they live?”

It’s true that Red Bow graduates (and they all graduate) live a cut above the rest. Most people can name ten Matchers at the drop of the hat because they’re on the TV, in the background of press conferences, meetings the Kardashians. A lot of people could probably name all hundred and seventy-three Matchers in the world at that moment. Selsa tries not to learn any of their names.

“I don’t need any of that.” She tells her sister and unmutes the TV to another show on home renovations.

She’s told Bibi before that she doesn’t have a string. But Bibi thinks she’s just not trained well enough to see it yet. It’s an argument that crops up occasionally with no resolution. Selsa dreams that Bibi will fall in love on her own and stop asking, but she’s not hopeful.

The roof over her bathtub collapses three days before Halloween. She is, at the time, inside the tub. It’s not pretty. She call’s Bibi to talk her down from panicking and manages to clean most of the mess up before dawn. She is not, however, clean by any stretch of the imagination.

“Wouldn’t it be wonderful,” her mother says when she steps into the lounge room. She’s visited for shower usage but it’s always nice to see her mum.

“Having a working bathroom?” Selsa asks as she rummages through the kitchen for a snack and finds some popcorn. She pulls her phone out and texts a photo of it to Bibi to either rub it in that she gets this glorious treat or to entice her to visit. They both only live five minutes from home.

“Of course, but imagine if you, or your sister, or I suddenly became a Matcher.” Her mother sounds dreamy, and Selsa is cautious. Bibi swore secrecy when Selsa first told her, but mums had a way about them. There’s a news report on the TV of the British Royal Family and it seems one of the Princesses have been matched.

“Mum, you’re too old.” She lies but she watches the footage. She’s never understood why film picks up ribbons, what it’s even picking up, but strings always come through with a kind of blue tinge. There’s a Princess in all her glory and at her side is one of the world’s richest tech geniuses.

“They look terrible together.” She says, because the princess looks like she would rather be anywhere else, and the man looks more interested in the crowd than himself.

“Nonsense,” her mother dismisses, “they’ve been matched. Three Red Bow Graduates individually certified their ribbon.”

Selsa feels tight in the chest, but it’s not the first time. She’s seen so many ‘perfect matches’, celebrities, and politicians, and royalty, and sometimes there’s a flicker or a ribbon, something that can be built on, but too often there’s nothing there.

She remembers vividly the day she realised that she could see the ribbons. When Aunt Pet had come over to watch a celebrity matched wedding with her mum, and instead of being excited for them Selsa had watched that thick red ribbon stretches out of the bride’s chest towards someone in the crowd. She never knew who it was, didn’t even say anything because Aunt Pet would have been angry for the interruption. But it had been so clear to her that she wondered how the Red Bow graduates had gotten it wrong.

“What if,” Bibi starts, she’s sprawled across the couch her feet on Selsa’s lap and a glass of wine in one hand, “we started our own matchmaking business.”

“No.” She’s firm, she doesn’t need a holiday, so she says it, “I don’t need a holiday.”

“It’s not about need!” Bibi jiggles her foot into Selsa’s leg, “It’s about want.”

Selsa should be impossible to persuade, she knows the danger it would put her in to have any eyes turned to her, but the hole over the bathtub is glaring, and there’s dust on her toothbrush every morning when she wakes up.

“They’d find me.” She argues, because it is true. There are so few Matchers. So few that the campaigns to fine them have a bigger budget than most movies and Selsa knows why they aggressively recruit even if she didn’t know at first. Because if you tell a lie and one person can argue it, then that lie can come out. But if you get everyone to tell the same lie- well that’s how you control the world.

“What if we did it with tarot cards? Made a little song and dance of it?” Bibi sounds thoughtful not pushy, and Selsa lets the idea wash over her, the possibilities, the improbabilities.

“It’d never work.” She dismisses.

“But don’t you want to help people?” The ‘me’ is left unsaid, and Selsa is glad because she loves Bibi but she is too tired.

The thing is, she wants to help people. The small coffee shop nudges don’t feel like enough. When she’s working her second job at Walmart and her co-workers don’t know what to do with their lives, it’s not enough. Every day she sees threads untangling, unravelling, reaching out into empty space, and she wants to stich them all together and make everyone happier, safer. But not at the cost of herself, her freedom. Not at the cost of sitting on the couch with her sister, and eating popcorn with her mum. Not at the cost of her freedom.


End file.
